I felt embarrassed for a friend once who tried showing off in front of a celeb. We were in a piano bar called “Don’t Tell Mamas” back in the 90s. One of the cast members from “Melrose Place” came in (the biker dude on the show). My friend was pretty drunk and wanted to impress him, so he asked the pianist to let him sing. He sang the Bette Midler song “the Rose.”
My friend was (putting it charitably) not a strong singer. He forgot the words and at one point was going “it is a riverrrrr…that something, na na na, something, somethinggggg…”, and the whole time he was faced directly at the MP guy (who was there with a girl) the whole time. After realizing it wasn’t going over well, my friend just gave up said “Oh well”, put the mic down on the piano and wandered back to his bar stool without bothering to finish the song. There was a feeble round of applause, and the pianist said “Thanks a lot” very awkwardly. We sat there in silence for a bit, and then decided to hit another bar.
It’s something we can laugh about now, but at the time even I was feeling red just by watching him. And “Melrose Place” wasn’t even a hot show anymore. In fact, I don’t think that guy was even ON the show at that point.
I’m on the fence whether this is jerkish or funny - since it made me smile and Tom Hanks started off as a comedian, I think I’ll go with funny.
You guys who can actually talk to celebrities are amazing me - the only celebrity I’ve ever met was getting my poster signed by Cy Curnin of The Fixx last summer, and all I managed was, “Would you sign this please?” I guess on the plus side I’m not bothering them with all my stories about how their music changed my life, blahblahblah.
Many moons ago, my sister and her (now ex-)husband moved out to L. A. because he was an actor. About a year later, he got a part on an episode of Bewitched. The following week, we came out to visit and he took us on a tour of Universal Studios that the general public will never get. While there, we went by the stage and he introduced us to the Bewitched folks. I was about 14 at the time and all I remember was how beautiful Elizabeth Montgomery was. And how tall. And how charming she was to a 14 year old dickhead kid who stammered and blushed every time she said something to him.
I was working as an intern with Reuters Television in Paris in the late 90s when I was in graduate school. I was backstage helping to cover the Amnesty International Concert for Human Rights, and there were tons of musicians hanging out backstage. At one point, my boss asked me to run and grab a cup of coffee for him. Being the enthusiastic intern I was, I ran to get the coffee and was running back with it when I turned the corner and pretty much dumped the coffee all over this poor guy’s chest. His *bare *chest.
I spluttered out, “Oh, god, I’m so sorry!”
And Robert Plant replied, “No worries, love. But forgive me, I gotta rush out to the stage.”
And off he ran, his man-chest glistening with trails of hot coffee. I ran back to my boss, handed him the empty cup of coffee, and promptly ran off to watch Page and Plant rock out on stage. My boss forgave me and even let me interview Shania Twain later that night.
The year I went to Dragoncon, I managed to spend all my cash before I noticed the booth where Steve Jackson was signing books. I didn’t have any of my Gurps books with me, and I had no money left to buy one to sign! What to do!
A nearby table was giving away free Munchkin bookmarks. Nothing fancy, just a strip of card stock with the Unatural Axe character on it. I grabbed one and got in line. The person in front of me had a ton of books that he had just bought just to have Steve Jackson sign them. Steve got through the mountain of books, then I stepped forward and timidly handed him my crappy little bookmark. He laughed, I mumbled something about spending all my money, and he gave me a free t-shirt. He signed the bookmark too.
I lost the bookmark to a tragic Mountain Dew accident, but I still have the shirt.
Let’s just say the first and only time I was along with some fellow celeb friends to hang out at the Chateau Marmont I got pretty tipsy… My friends who I was with that night were celebs, yes, but the reputation of some of the others who were in attendance had a bit more pull in the industry, most notably Tarantino, that I can remember.
I just have those slight memories of hearing ‘You’re friend looks kind of drunk’ or ‘Are you okay?’ while we were leaving… don’t remember much prior to that other than my friend playing a song on the piano when we got there and having a chat outside along with our drinks.
It’s only one of the most notable and hardest places to get into as a non-celeb and I totally fucked it up. :smack:
So I’m in Michigan City, Indiana, the day before Election Day last year. Sean Astin, who was a big Obama supporter, was going around tot he campaign offices in the area, peppnig people up, saying hi, and what not. So he gets to my office and I receive him. My girlfriend practically had nerdgasms. She may have barely squeaked out a “Hi”, but then she hid behind me, one eye peeking out around my shoulder. I still pick on her about it to this day (okay, so it was last year).
Also on the campaign trail, I met Michelle, Barack, Joe Biden, Austan Goolsby (One of the President’s chief financial advisors. He knocked doors for me with his family for a weekend.), Scarlett Johansson, Jay Z, Doug E. Fresh, Usher, and Kal Penn.
Back in college, the band I was in took a trip to Nashville. While there, the buddy we crashed with took us to the local Virgin Records store.
While walking through the aisles of cds, I frequently walked past a guy, wearing dark clothes and a stocking hat. This would be the mid-90s, so he was sporting the fledgling alternative ‘look.’ He was several inches shorter than me, but I remember noticing he was quite striking-looking, but didn’t necessarily recognize him.
After several minutes, the guy we were crashing with ran up to me, excitedly saying “Do you know who that is?!? That’s TRENT REZNOR!!!” Well, by this time, everyone knew who Nine Inch Nails was. After this, I could see a gaggle of gothly kids at the end of every aisle he was in, huddled and cooing.
I’m not sure if I’m jealous or not. On one hand, so many of you have actually met famous people, but on the other hand, most of you had embarrassing encounters.
The only celebrity I’ve met was Sally Fields. And that was only briefly at LAX.
When I was a teen, my dad’s company had something to do with the scoring at PGA tournaments, and he gave me tickets to an LPGA event when they came to town.
At some point I grabbed a hot dog and drink for lunch. While milling around, I bumped into a woman making her spill her drink. She glared at me for a moment, but I was a wee lad and she softened a bit and told me I had mustard on my face and shirt. I started to tell her I got some on her shirt as well, but she turned and left before I could say any more.
Later, my dad asked me what she said to me. “Who?” I asked. “Nancy Lopez. I saw you two talking earlier.”
I’ve since turned my violent mustard attack on an innocent woman into a treasured family story. Any time her name is mentioned or we see her on TV, I say “I know her! We had lunch together once. We’re like this! (crossing fingers) I should call her.”
Of course my wife spilled the truth years ago, so everyone - my kids included - just groans or shakes their head.
My husband bumped into Donna Shalala when she was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he was a freshman there. They were at a fairly casual university event for the incoming freshmen, and he literally bumped into her (he’s rather tall, she’s… not), spilling her coffee onto her standard brightly-colored blazer. Oops! She laughed it off, thankfully.
There was the time when I gushed to a particular artist about his work at a signing and got a personalized autograph - and only when he asked for my first name did it come crashing down on me that I shared not-common first names with his ex-wife, with whom he’d gone through a nasty divorce. :smack: He was classy about it (in that besides an extremely fleeting wide-eyed expression he acted like there was nothing notable about it) and it wasn’t like it was my fault, so I’ll leave that anecdote there.
I’m from Wisconsin originally, and early in high school I was returning from a class trip, walking through the airport in Milwaukee with classmates. This was a couple years after the Milwaukee Brewers won the AL pennant ('82), and they were still fairly beloved for doing so well - and we noticed a number of them in the airport bar. We got autographs from a number of the players. We didn’t linger too long, and soon after exiting the bar I was talking with a couple of my friends about how neat it was to meet some of the Brewers. During that conversation, my brain was nagging at me about a guy we were passing. It wasn’t until later that I realized we’d walked right past Robin Yount, who’d been an All-Star repeatedly in recent years and the AL MVP during their best season, and who hadn’t been in the bar. We walked right past their major star without really noticing because we were so wrapped up in that moment. :smack:
I’ll tell my story, then I’ll go back and read the thread.
So Bruce Campbell was coming to town, and I had bought his book “Confessions of a B Movie Actor” and I got in line to have him sign it, with my SO with me. I had a huge crush on him.
There were almost no other girls there, all boys. So the line went, and I finally got up to him - and I realized I hadn’t thought of what to say to him, at all.
He made small talk and then said something like, “So what do you guys do for fun in Albany?” And I, in all my eternal tongue-tied wittiness, said “Nothing.” And then blushed scarlet.
Nothing! We do nothing in Albany, oh, no, we just sit around all day waiting for His Grand Holiness Bruce Campbell to show up. I tried to cover it up but I was already embarrassed because I knew I had made the faux pas because I was attracted and so I just stuttered something out and made it worse. He took pity on me, signed the book “Gimme some sugar, baby!” and sent me on my way.
Ummm, isn’t she instantly recognizable from her other … attributes … that she’s famous for (and are not SO TINY?)
Somehow, I can’t picture Frank Beard unshaven at all, that would be like me picturing the other two clean-shaven.
Does she really need a plane?
My two stories (that come to mind):
Starting with the less famous (and less embarassing, more “humourous” story). To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the CBC in Sept. 2002, the network had some of their stars tour the country by VIA Rail to meet the public. In Winnipeg, one of the stars that came was Luba Goy, of the Royal Canadian Air Farce. I like the show, so I got my wife and our then-infant daughter (about a month old at the time) down to stand in line, take a picture with her, and have an autograph signed. Interestingly, when we were about 3 or 4 people away from the front Luba saw us and was squeeing over the adorable baby in the stroller. She then went back to her place to meet with the people that were ahead of us, but when it came to our turn she couldn’t wait to see our baby. Turns out Luba also had her child(ren?) via c-section like my wife did, so she traded c-section stories with my wife. We got a picture taken of the three of us with Luba and I made sure to get a copy to mail to her c/o the CBC. I recieved a Christmas card from her in the mail a few months later thanking her for the picture (“it’s on my dressing room mirror” she said). I was quite impressed how a celebrity was fawning over us (well, our child, but I also got a kick how her and my wife were swapping c-section stories like old friends.)
The other story involves someone more famous and a bit more embarassing. When I first started performing standup comedy 20 years ago I was fortunate that the club I was currently playing had an upcoming show featuring Tommy Chong! I love Cheech & Chong so I brought one of the C&C cassettes I had to autograph, and bought tickets for the show and took my sister along since we both like Cheech and Chong. (One of the few times I’ve actually had to pay for a comedy show instead of getting comped because I was the performer). After the show of course we had to go up and say hi to Chong. I of course was asking him all about comedy (fresh-faced young comic wanting to learn from the master and all) but my sister, who was not a comedian but did play the guitar was rapping with him about blues guitar (he may have mentioned his playing guitar in his bit, that might be how he knew), my sister pretty much monopolized our time with him, she told me later that Chong really liked talking with her (not just because she was a 17 year old blonde female ) because, as she told me he said, “most peopel ask me about comedy or ‘Where’s Cheech?’”, whereas she talked with hiim about something else he’s passionate about and rarely gets to talk about. I do however, still own the cassette he signed (even though I’ve gotten rid of most of my other cassettes long ago): “Dave’s not here!” (yes, my name is David.)
I ran into them in New Orleans, on Bourbon Street, during Mardi Gras sometime in the early 90s (I’m assuming it was Linda E, but it was definitely Kyle). It was late, like 3:00am, and I ran into a friend of mine who tells me she just passed Kyle McLaughlin. So I walk down the street and sure enough, there he is getting close with some rather hot woman. She’s facing me and notices me looking, so I say “Excuse me ma’am, but is that Agent Cooper you’re hugging?” I must say, for it being 3:00am on Bourbon Street and me being a bit tipsy, he was very gracious and did not seem to mind talking to me.
I was helping a friend out by staffing a fundraising event in Indianapolis. It was an extremely fancy, black-tie charity auction a few weeks before the 500. I knew there were going to be drivers and other pretty big-name folks there. However, I was new to Indy, and not familiar with many of the names, let alone ANY of the faces.
Well, it turned out pretty easy to spot the drivers - they were surrounded by beautiful women. My job was to mingle with people in the lobby, and suggest they go and browse the items for bid (silent auction style). I was talking with one guy off to the side, who was polite enough. He mentioned he had bid on a few items, so I wasn’t going to push it. But to continue the small talk, I inquired,
I was in the office on a Saturday just to pick something up. I ran to my desk, grabbed whatever it was, raced through the upstairs lobby, through the glass doors, down a flight of stairs, and flung myself around the corner hanging on to the banister (all this to say, I was in a hurry). Mid-way through the flinging part, I am suddenly stopped by…Ted Nugent. Or rather, his chest, which I bounced off of at high speed. He burst out laughing, asked if I was ok, and kept moving, while I just stood there like an idiot, glad I’d been inside crossbow range.
Another time wasn’t embarassing, but stupid luck. I worked for a very high maintenance guy who was always sending me on little personal missions. This time he wanted a Coke - and the machine on our floor was out. I went down stairs (same stairs as above, but a much more sedate pace this time), got a Coke from the machine, and was walking back towards the stairs when I heard someone say “boy, I wish I had a Coke!”. I looked to the left, and it’s Graham Nash! For once in my life I got it right - I said “your wish is my command” and handed him the Coke I was carrying.
He laughed, thanked me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
He signed the bookmark too.
) because, as she told me he said, “most peopel ask me about comedy or ‘Where’s Cheech?’”, whereas she talked with hiim about something else he’s passionate about and rarely gets to talk about. I do however, still own the cassette he signed (even though I’ve gotten rid of most of my other cassettes long ago): “Dave’s not here!” (yes, my name is David.)